Students show strong satisfaction with our courses in the 2017 National Student Survey, praising the intellectually stimulating content of their course
More than 300,000 final year students at more than 500 universities and colleges nationwide took part in the annual survey, which records in detail how students feel about their learning experience.
All the subjects taught at the Lancaster Environment Centre scored well on the question of how satisfied students are with their course.
Physical Geography and Environmental Science did especially well, with 97% of final year students saying they are satisfied with their course. For Biology 95% of students are satisfied, as are 90% studying Human and Social Geography. This compares to an average satisfaction rate of 84% nationally for all the students completing the survey.
Students praised the courses, in particular, for being intellectually stimulating: with a 100% of Physical Geography and Environmental Science students, 98% of Biology students and 92% of Human and Social Geography students agreeing with this questions.
This follows Lancaster being ranked 5th in the UK for studying Geography and Environmental Science in the latest Guardian University Guide.
Overall 91 per cent of Lancaster University students are satisfied with their course: according to Times Higher Education, this means that Lancaster is ranked fourth in the UK for student satisfaction, when FE colleges and small or specialist providers are excluded.
It is further evidence of the high quality of the student experience at Lancaster and follows closely on the heels of a Gold Award in the Teaching Excellence Framework, which measures teaching quality alongside employment outcomes and programme completion.
Professor Mark E Smith, the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University, said: 'Staff at Lancaster University put a huge amount of effort into providing a high quality learning experience for our students. They do this in partnership with our students and I would like to congratulate everyone on another very strong result for Lancaster.
“We take the NSS very seriously because it gives us important feedback about how to further improve the quality of our teaching. Although we are regularly amongst the top 10 for overall satisfaction that doesn't mean that we are complacent or cannot do better.’
Professor Jane Taylor, Deputy Director of the Lancaster Environment Centre, said: “It’s really great to see that we are maintaining quality in our teaching year on year as shown in our consistent good performance in the National Student Survey. We aim to challenge and stretch our students, and the survey suggests that we succeed in doing so.”
The National Student Survey asks final year students questions about the quality of their teaching, learning opportunities, assessment and feedback, academic support, the organisation and management of their course, the quality of learning resources, whether they feel part of a learning community, whether they are listened to and the strength of the student union.